InfoQ Homepage Architecture & Design Content on InfoQ
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Measuring and Comparing the Performance of 5 Cloud Platforms
Bitcurrent and Webmetrics have run a number of tests for a month on 5 different cloud platforms - Amazon, Google, Rackspace, Salesforce.com, and Terremark -, attempting to measure the performance of each platform. One of their conclusions is that each platform works better for different application types.
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Apache FOP 1.0 released
On Wednesday, the Apache Foundation announced the release of Apache FOP 1.0, a project that has been a decade in the making. Apache FOP, or Formatting Objects Processor, provides a means to turn XML documents into a variety of print-ready formats, such as PDF, PostScript, or even PNG
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Using the Cloud: Two Examples
Most of the discussion about cloud computing has focused on tools, providers, and security. While this focus is appropriate for an emerging technology, it becomes easier to recognize the value of cloud computing when you have actual application examples, or case studies. This month IBM announced two such applications: a development-and-test cloud, and an animation rendering cloud.
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.NET and Azure Samples Showcase .NET Technologies Used in a Layered Architecture
Serena Yeoh, a Microsoft consultant and a contributor to Microsoft pattern&practices Application Architecture Guide, has created a Layered Architecture Sample for .NET 4.0 which was later ported to Azure, showcasing various .NET technologies (WPF, WCF, WF, ASP.NET, ADO.NET EF) used in an architecture based on the Layered Architecture design pattern.
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Rearchitecting Applications for the Cloud
While there is an overall consensus on the business benefits of migrating to the cloud, the question on rearchitecting applications for the cloud is still heavily debated on the Internet.
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DataMapper Reaches 1.0 Milestone
DataMapper, an Object Relational Mapper (ORM) for Ruby, arrived at a milestone recently reaching 1.0 status. The release, announced during RailsConf 2010, and coinciding with Dirkjan Bussink's presentation at the conference on the subject.
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Does the Cloud Need Server Virtualization?
Simeon Simeonov wrote an essay on the latest strategy of VMWare in the wake of the SpringSource Acquisition 12 months ago. He contends that if Server Virtualization was a key enabler of Cloud Computing, it's days might be counted as VMware CTO Steve Herrod explains “We are committed to making Spring the best language for cloud applications, even if that cloud is not based on VMware vSphere.”
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Cius, Exadata, Itasca: more than a platform
The Cius tablet PC from Cisco and the Exadata machine from Oracle-Sun involve more than the simple introduction of a new enterprise technology - they also indicate a possible new (or accelerating) trend away from selling general purpose platforms and towards tightly integrated application systems.
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SAMbdas in Java
Since the initial Lambda proposal was released (and the in-depth InfoQ analysis), there has been a subsequent state of the lambda which has significantly moved the goalposts of the lambda project in JDK 7. Read on to find out what's new.
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Polymath: a new IT job description
Is "polymath" a required job skill for IT professionals? The rise of cloud computing, "green" computing, ultra-large scale systems, and even SOA and SaaS suggest the answer is yes. A book by Vinnie Mirchandani has prompted a flurry of commentary on what it would mean to be an IT Polymath and why such a skill is desirable.
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The Top-Down vs Bottom-Up SOA Debate Revisited
A long standing debate in the SOA community about top down vs. bottom up approaches to SOA resurfaced recently, after open source ESB maker MuleSoft announced the release of a management console said to support their bottom-up approach to SOA management philosophy.
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Rackspace Has Open Sourced Its Cloud Platform
Rackspace has opened its cloud computing platform source code under Apache 2.0 license as part of OpenStack initiative. NASA is contributing with technology powering NASA Nebula Cloud Platform.
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BigPipe at Facebook: Optimizing Page Load Time
Changhao Jiang, Research Scientist at Facebook, describes a technique, called BigPipe, that contributed to making the Facebook site, "twice as fast." BigPipe is one of several innovations, a "secret weapon," used to achieve the reported performance gains. Another innovation mentioned is architectural in nature, the structuring of Web pages as "pagelets."
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EF Feature CTP 4 Brings Code First Updates and Productivity Improvements
Entity Framework Feature CTP 4 recently released updates the Code First programming model with new code conventions and data annotations, and adds two new types, DbContext and DbSet<TEntity>, providing easy entity model setup using Code First.
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Facebook on Hadoop, Hive, HBase, and A/B Testing
The Hadoop Summit of 2010 included presentations from a number of large scale users of Hadoop and related technologies. Notably, Facebook presented a keynote and details information about their use of Hive for analytics. Mike Schroepfer, Facebook's VP of Engineering delivered a keynote describing the scale of their data processing with Hadoop.